Vending machine locations in Tennessee, by the numbers

What is on the record for Tennessee

Three venues, three weeks, three corners of the state.

Hermitage sits beside Nashville, Kingsport in the far northeast and Atoka west of Memphis — roughly 500 miles between the extremes.

Complete listings that still cannot be ranked

The two gaps in this dataset are a missing visitor count and a missing visit length. Tennessee has none of the first and all of the second.

Only five of the 26 venue types in this record carry a published average visit length: bowling alleys at 2.7 hours, family entertainment centres at 2.5, indoor playgrounds and trampoline parks at 1.5, and filling stations at a few minutes. Water parks, arcades and amusement parks are not among them.

So Tennessee is the inverse of Missouri, where the single listing reports no traffic at all. Here the numbers are complete and the categories are the problem — which is the more common failure in this dataset, and the harder one to see, because a reported count reads like usable data. The conversion method is set out in our ranking of vending locations.

Where Hermitage would rank if it could

High on footfall and unknown on exposure. Its 710 visitors a day is sixth-highest of the 87 placements.

Four of the six busiest placements in the record cannot be converted, and the two that can are filling stations whose few-minute visit length puts them near the bottom of the exposure table. The dataset’s traffic leaders and its exposure leaders barely overlap.

The share uniformity is the finding Tennessee does support

Three venues, traffic from 140 to 710 a day, and 40% of net at every one.

A fivefold traffic spread and a tier difference produced no variation at all. That is consistent with the pattern across the record — 55 of 87 placements agreed exactly 40% — and Tennessee states it unusually cleanly, because the three venues are so unlike each other. Beyond the Tennessee row, what the revenue-share data shows across all 87 placements covers everything Tennessee leaves out.

What is missing from Tennessee’s record?

Every measurable category, and all four metros. Tennessee shows a water park, an arcade and an amusement park; bowling alleys, trampoline parks, indoor playgrounds and family entertainment centres supply 44 of the 87 national placements and none of Tennessee’s.

Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga hold all four. A single bowling alley placement would give Tennessee its first rankable listing — a larger improvement to the state’s row than a fourth unmeasurable venue would be. Vending machine locations by state shows where every state stands.